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Shallots: From Exotic to Everyday

by Regina Schrambling

on 12/27/10 at 03:01 PM

I'm taking my time reading "As Always, Julia," the new collection of letters between the divine Mrs. Child and the woman who nurtured "Mastering" into print, because it's such an amazing read. For starters, their political back-and-forth makes it very clear how relentlessly history repeats itself. But all the food discussions are of course beyond fascinating, giving serious insight into how Americans cooked nearly 60 years ago.

The faithful correspondent, Avis DeVoto in Cambridge, Mass., is Julia's de facto adviser on ingredients available across the Atlantic from where she is testing and writing recipes in France and Germany. And shallots come up often.

In 1953, they are "hard to find, and certainly expensive," DeVoto writes. "I can get them by ordering ahead. There must be an infinity of places in this country where they have never been heard of." She goes on to suggest sweet red Italian onions, or scallions, as an alternative. So Julia mails her the French kind, worrying more about whether the aggressive postal clerk has smashed them in stamping them than whether the USDA would look kindly on imported produce arriving here uninspected.

Today, of course, shallots are carried in even the lamest grocery store. But Julia's still right: There is no exact substitute. (I see she wound up offering alternatives but then advised: "Or omit them altogether.")

Until this past summer, I was taking them for granted, but a neighbor turned me on to the ones Ray Bradley grows up the Hudson River, near New Paltz, and sells at Greenmarkets in Manhattan and Brooklyn. They look, as you can see, like something the barn cat dragged in. But they are amazing. We chop one tiny one up every time we have a salad, and it adds the perfect amount of pungency to a basic vinaigrette.

Once these are gone, it will be a long, tame winter. But not quite like the 1950s. At least now you can sometimes find imported shallots, and even the home-grown kind make a huge difference in any dish, for very little money. A beurre blanc would not be a beurre blanc with scallions.

Shallots are one of my favorite things. I use them in place of most onions and even though they change the flavor of a dish, I like the new flavor creation.

ruchell 07:59:35 PM on 12/28/10

I so agree with you about politics repeating themselves -- that is exactly what I felt while reading 'As Always, Julia.' Also, many years ago my great-uncle, who was very French, always talked about something he called 'eschallotes' (probably the wrong spelling) and how wonderful they were. I saw my first ones in 1981 at a farmer's market in Kutztown, Pa.